Treatise on the Accusative of State by Mustafa Muhibbi

Abstract

This paper presents a hitherto unpublished Treatise on the Accusative of State (Risāla ḥāl) written in Arabic at the end of the 18th century. The author of the treatise is Mustafa Muhibbi (Muṣṭafā Muḥibbī), a poet and prose author, who also served as a mufti in Zvornik. Two copies of this work were used as sources. One copy is held in the manuscript collection of the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo and the other one in the collection of manuscripts in oriental languages of the University Library Svetozar Marković in Belgrade. The research includes textological preparation of a text accompanied by an annotated translation and a textual analysis of the content of the Treatise. The review of the content brings a study of the accusative of state within Arabic grammatical thought and especially within those classical sources which the author refers to when considering the central issue of the treatise related to different linguistic interpretations of the 28th verse of the Surah Sabaʼ.